Interesting experience with Plus recently - called with a support issue on Friday, spoke to a helpful guy called Dan - agreed what action I had to do next, and I did it.

Left message in "my questions" about the result - no one in support even got around to reading the message for FIVE DAYS! And when they did, they asked me to use the fault tracker thingy - which I can't because I don't have an internet connection at my house, and when I use it at a friends, it says "There's been a problem. We're sorry, but you can't use the Broadband Troubleshooter to report a fault on your service. Please contact our Support Team for help."

No problem, I thought, I'll phone them. Was on hold for 13 minutes, in the damn queue, and then they cut off

So I phoned again, was on hold for another 13 minutes, and then cut off, again.

So I phoned again - guess what - cut off yet again.

There was a time that Plus was a professional & conscious company - all the evidence so far is that level of customer service has gone. So far this week, the service is as bad as carphone whorehouse!

I can remember a time when calling Ofcom, that the options were - button 1 for a new complaint, button 2 for an existing complaint, button 3 for Talk Talk complaints.... my recent experience suggests they may need to add a button for Plus complaints

(Which is a pity really, because Plus used to be absolutely brilliant)

Maybe someone from Plus would like to contact me - Tony Thompson, where are you when I need you!?

« Last Edit: February 09, 2011, 11:17:00 pm by Michelle »

Michelle

(who knows she's a seasoned IT professional, because the people offering her support weren't even born when she booted her first PC)

Left message in "my questions" about the result - no one in support even got around to reading the message for FIVE DAYS! And when they did, they asked me to use the fault tracker thingy - which I can't because I don't have an internet connection at my house, and when I use it at a friends, it says "There's been a problem. We're sorry, but you can't use the Broadband Troubleshooter to report a fault on your service. Please contact our Support Team for help."

No problem, I thought, I'll phone them. Was on hold for 13 minutes, in the damn queue, and then they cut off

So I phoned again, was on hold for another 13 minutes, and then cut off, again.

So I phoned again - guess what - cut off yet again.

I had exactly the same problem. No response to a comment I made in the ticketing system so I tried to phone. After 13 minutes exactly I was cut off. I tried again, same issue ! Before being cut off, a recording told me there was a 30 minute delay due to unexpected high call volume. I reckon they need to fire the soothsayer who predicts the call volumes.

Now the BT visit has been cancelled twice - admittedly probably not through PlusNet's fault, but at least PN should have taken ownership of the problem, chased BT and reported back to me.

I initially moved to PN when they were the biggest of the 'also ran's and when they were small they were great. Now they are too big. Zen seem to be best of the small ones now.

@michelle - I'm sorry to hear that, I assume this is on a different account to the one you posted this from as I can't see any tickets open on that account. If you PM me a username or ticket ID I'd be happy to investigate for you.

@eugeneg - Likewise I'm afraid I can't find your account to give your ticket a kick in the right direction, any chance you could PM a ticket ID?

Both calls where I hung on long enough to be cut off were on 9th Feb. Both calls were made to 0845 140 0200

On both calls, I picked the option for support, then faults (I think that's option 6, then option 3 (an existing fault))

The times are based on the clock on my PC, which should be synced to an atomic clock

First call started at 21:11, and terminated at 21:24

Second call started at 21:25, and terminated at 21:39

Third call started at 21:41, this time to the 0080 number , I picked option 3 (existing fault) and when I realised I was probably in the same queue as I had been for calls 1 & 2 I gave up holding at 21:45

I tried one further call to Business support (because I can!), and discovered there is no "report a fault" option on the business support number.

Michelle

Michelle

(who knows she's a seasoned IT professional, because the people offering her support weren't even born when she booted her first PC)

Michelle and Eugeneg - I'm following this thread with great interest. I, too, was thrilled (really!) with my switchover to plusnet when it was small but perfect. Like yourselves, I've had some awful experiences recently - but have now discovered the usergroup forum which seems to be of far more help and good at giving a nudge in the right direction. So I'll hang in there for now. But, seriously, PN - your customer services department needs a radical shake up!

Received your PM, thanks - sometimes when an appointment is booked on short notice it doesn't actually get booked by BT as the system we use then passes the details on to the appointing system used by the engineers themselves. It's this step that can fail unfortunately.

I can see that the appointment is now confirmed for the 15th, I'm afraid we can't do anything to bring this forward however I'll keep an eye on the fault for you and update you as soon as engineer's notes are available.

@Michelle,

I can see that Tony's picked this up for you and that an engineer has been booked for Monday, no doubt he'll update you as soon as notes are available but I'll make sure to check on things for you. It should be a lot smoother from here on, and I'm very sorry you had to post here to get things moving like this.

Thanks for flagging up the issues with the calls dropping at 13(ish) minutes, we've replicated and resolved the issue from here. Basically the routing on one of the internal hunt groups was incorrect resulting in the calls going where they shouldn't and timing out.

Chris, while the fix to the telephone support is clearly a move in the right direction, how about somebody from plusnet addresses the quite abysmal ticket response times (especially regarding the fibre products?)

All of those threads are related to the fibre trial though, and on the page at http://trials.plus.net it does warn clearly that it may be between 7 and 14 days before the ticket is replied to. We appreciate this isn't ideal but please bear in mind that it is still a trial at present.

Yes, that page warns that you may have to wait 7-14 days for your request to join the fibre trial to be processed. It does not say that you should expect to be ignored for 7 to 14 days if a fault occurs after you have joined.

Can you confirm that all faults/tickets raised through the portal go into a single pot before being allocated to the correct team (I seem to remember that you usually get an "Internal - passed to correct team" message when the ticket is initial read and before you get an actual response to your ticket)? If so then we're talking about *everyone* waiting 4 or 5 days on their tickets...

My feeling is that waiting a long time for a resolution is more tolerable if one receives daily updates so that at least you know that someone is taking an interest in your problem. I do this for my clients who tell me they appreciate it, but often I have to say no more than 'PlusNet haven't responded at all' this makes selling PlusNet on to clients' friends difficult.

I take Matt's point about the fiber being a trial, but surely this should be the time when PN staff are being trained on how to work the new system. Implying that a huge delay in responding is acceptable as it said so in the Terms is rather missing the point IMHO.